


From a dozen pairs of eyes (and one or two stray ones)

by writerwithoutcause



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, Introspection, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-03-12 09:28:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3351632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerwithoutcause/pseuds/writerwithoutcause
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaneki's story may be a tragedy, but he is not alone, and each of the people around him are their own story's protagonist. And their lives do not revolve around him. </p><p>Short, jarred snapshots of the things they go through together, and the things they don't. (Because, after all, a dozen pairs of eyes are better than one, even when no one is really sure which belong to who.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hinami - Rewriting

Being born a ghoul is a little like being punished for the crimes you haven't yet committed but are going to.

That's a fact of life, and Hinami is never as aware of that as she is when her mother first tells her, hesitant but resigned, that, yes, the things they eat for dinner are very much like their former next door neighbours, like Sakura-chan and Rei-kun, and that is why some humans hunt them, that is why her father died, very quickly making her promise not to tell anyone that, _never, do you understand me, never,_ or they would get hunted.

Years later and her mother dead at the hand of Doves, Hinami remembers her mother's wide, scared eyes and the way she had taken her by her then tiny shoulders and _shaken_ her until she'd promised not to tell anyone, or let them know, or be anything other than _profoundly_ careful, and she thinks that her mother's words were more like the crystallisation of the deep, irrational fear of discovery and death she'd felt then than wise advice. Because, after all, even with all of her precautions, her mother had still died. Touka-chan and Kaneki-kun and the flower man could _still_ die,  _any_ day, murdered by the same things that killed her parents.

Hinami doesn't really like to think about that, though, and it doesn't do her any good to do it, so she mostly ignores the ever-impending death hanging above everyone's head like the proverbial guillotine in favour of learning how to read with the help of Takatsuki Sen's works and Kaneki-kun's patience. And the days when she can't quite seem to forget the fact that even though they are ghouls, it doesn't mean they aren't mortal, well, she burrows herself even deeper in Sen's books because that's safe, because those are only characters and when they die, she can just stop reading and go back to the beginning of the book and, _look_ , they're alive again.

(She can do this, but doesn't, because Takatsuki Sen's words hold a kind of magic that makes her unable to stop reading before she finishes the book, even when she doesn't understand all of the words, even when they make her shiver with fear or revulsion or rage. But she'll read the novel again, after finishing it, and stop before reaching the part where her favourite character dies, she'll stop and imagine how the novel would have had to change for them to survive, and, in her mind, she erases Takatsuki Sen's words and replaces them with her own. Sometimes, she wishes she could do that with life, too, not just books, but she can't, and indulging in fantasies of what her life might be if she could is useless, so she just... doesn't. 

Besides, rewriting books is so much more fun.)


	2. Kaneki - Ghoul/Monster

Becoming a ghoul isn't Kaneki's fault, it's irony and tragedy and just plain dumb ( _bad_ ) luck.

Becoming a monster _is_ partly ( _all_ ) Kaneki's fault, but mostly, it's other people's - Rize and Tsukiyama and Jason's. (Some days, he thinks it all started with his mother and his father and his aunt. Other days, not so much.)

But still, still, at the end of the day, becoming a monster - it's partly his own fault, too.


	3. Kaneki - Morality

Truthfully, it's not like Kaneki has the moral ground to stand on and fling accusations at Tsukyiama.

(How do you quantify evil, how do you tell if one is lesser than another? Is killing someone the worst, or making them wish they were dead? Relative, relative, just like Kaneki's morals, just like the colour of his hair, and for once in his life black isn't bad and white isn't good.)

But, really - the other man's presence just doesn't sit well with Kaneki, and neither do his habits, no matter how much he tries to stop caring.


	4. Kaneki - Victim/Abuser

They say that victims will sometimes relive their abuse, that they'll identify with either the tormentor or the tormented. And, well, it's easy to see who Kaneki identifies with (different people at different times, his mother and Jason and no one at all, he is the black goat and her egg and their executioner).

But-


	5. Kaneki - Identity

Kaneki is Kaneki even when he isn't, even when Kaneki isn't his name and Kaneki's memories aren't his. Kaneki is Kaneki because he likes Takatsuki Sen's books and Touka-chan's coffee and is responsible, dependable, wants to protect those he cares for and those in his care.

Kaneki is Kaneki because of the monster lying under the bed, in his head, just waiting to grab him and gobble him up and take his place (and also because he can never quite decide whether he is a bigger monster than the one trying to take his place). Kaneki is Kaneki, even when he isn't, because there's no one else he could ever be.


	6. Hide - Ominous Feeling/Stubbornness

Hide doesn't believe in miracles, or in prayers, or in good luck charms. Not like he believes in articles and research and his intuition, anyway, and it is for good reason - as opposed to research, there is no proof that good luck charms help you with anything other than divesting your wallet of a few hundred yen.

So as Kaneki goes out on a date with a pretty, long haired woman that is obviously out of his league and a building collapses on them and Kaneki has to stay in hospital for a week, and then, upon returning, starts to become secretive and weird and just... change from the person Hide has known all his life, Hide does what he does best - he researches and investigates and deduces.

And when all the strange things start coming together to form a bigger picture, he hopes he's wrong (and wishes miracles and good luck charms were a thing because he doesn't think he is, wrong) and starts to make plans for the future, because Hide has known Kaneki since primary school, been friends with him since the first day when he'd moved to the other's school and found himself intrigued by the black-haired boy sitting in the last row all alone, never speaking unless he was spoken, his nose always buried in a book...

Kaneki's been Hide's best and oldest friend for so long (with the notable exception of that time, in sixth grade, when Hide had accidentally spilled juice on one of his friend's books and ruined it - Kaneki had then refused to talk to him for a week after that, and Hide had ended up using a great part of his pocket money to buy him a new one; Kaneki had grudgingly accepted his apology after that, and they'd never let something or someone get between them again after that) -

Hide's not going to give up on Kaneki just because of a little... dietary preference. 


	7. Touka - Spots

In Touka's mind, there's a clear line separating the ghouls from the humans.

When she heard about how Kaneki became a half-ghoul, she didn't, despite her preference for simplicity, trace an imaginary line down his middle, from the crown of his head to the middle of the space between his legs, and split him in half. Not in the beginning, and not after things got complicated, either.

In the beginning, she had thought of the ghoul inside of Kaneki as spots on a dog, one over his ghoul eye and another, bigger one, circling the scar on his abdomen, both bright red in her imagination and not unlike the target marks humans used to measure their accuracy at shooting things or throwing darts.

After she saw Kaneki's kagune the first time, she added another spot to her mental list, a big, red circle on Kaneki's lower back.

It was weird, thinking of Kaneki in matter of ghoul spots and the human rest. Sometimes the intense, red marks would be so obvious and real-looking that Touka started to doubt they were only in her head. Sometimes they were so blurry and faded Touka almost forgot they were there, almost believed he was like her, but then Kaneki said something so... human, and she'd suddenly be reminded that he'd spent the first nineteen years of his life and being a ghoul was still somewhat of a novelty to him.

And then things happened, things like Aogiri and Hayate and Jason, and Kaneki returned with white hair and a pair of incompetent but well-meaning henchmen and power and nightly nightmares that everyone sleeping in the back of Anteiku wordlessly convened to ignore and pretend as though they hadn't happened.

The white hair and the black nails got assigned red spots, too.

And maybe she didn't notice in the beginning, but she did eventually realise what all the changes meant - Kaneki was different. He'd come back changed from that place, and the white hair and nightmares were just the superficial clues, but there were other things, like the way he was always so serious and unmovable in his awkward way, like how his eyes looked troubled and resigned (like Touka's had after her parents had been killed).

And there was also the way he was spending so much time with Tsukiyama and Nishiki and his new, loser henchmen.

Before, Kaneki had been either flustered or frightened by the man, and considering the sleaze had once tried to eat him, before deciding otherwise and then telling Kaneki that he was "saving him for later", Touka understood why that was. But now Kaneki was spending more and more time with him, what with the weird meetings even she participated in sometimes, and Kaneki... he was cold and determined and truthfully a little frightening, but then again, he also appeared to have turned into Tsukyiama's new master (the gourmet was like a pooch that way) and to be keeping a tight leash on him.

A new spot appeared, purple like a half-healed bruise, right over Kaneki’s head, because Touka realised that not all strange things about Kaneki were ghoulish, some of them were just _him_. Also, she figured that was the closest thing to his brain, since she didn't want to imagine Kaneki's head cracked open and his brain showing just to keep track of the ghoul parts of him.

Things had changed, indeed - _then_ , more than ever before, Kaneki understood how it was for humans to hate him for something he couldn't control, he understood that there were people who wanted him dead or were wishing he were dead, even among the ghouls. And there was something about that resigned determination and new-found ability to lie through his teeth that Touka recognised. That she identified with. (Not completely, never completely, but enough to empathise with him.)

It took her some time to hear about Kaneki's new eating habit. _Cannibalism_. When she did, well, she was surprised though she later realised she shouldn't have been - _of course_ Kaneki had found a way to eat and get stronger but not harm any humans. _Of course_ there was a part of him that still believed, stupidly, prejudicedly, that humans were better than ghouls because the latter ate the former.

And while some ghouls (most or very few, depending on the place) _were_ like that, reasonless and godless flesh-eating monsters, Kaneki seemed to believe that, with the exception of his friends, _all_ ghouls were monsters (or, at least, that’s what it felt like to Touka). In a way (in most ways), it was unfair of him, because humans could sometimes be worse monsters than ghouls, but he still thought of them, as a whole, better than ghouls. Unfair and, from Touka's perspective, untrue, but Kaneki was his usual stupid self, so she supposed it couldn't be helped.

Still, another spot appeared over his mouth. Only, this time, Touka couldn't quite class this weird and worrisome habit (cannibalism) of Kaneki's ( _cannibalism_ ) as either human or ghoul, because very few ghouls ever ate others of their own (and when they did, they certainly didn't abstain from human flesh if given half a chance) and no human would ever so much as think about eating a ghoul. So this spot, too, became a weird purple...

And Kaneki only seemed to get even more strange after that, with his idiotic search for Rize's killer and doctor Kanou and all - honestly, by the end, he would've probably been looking like a Dalmatian more than anything... if Touka hadn't given up on keeping score, that is.

But it's kind of useless to keep track of Kaneki's ghoul side and human side when the boy - the man - the boy is on neither. Also, there were so many spots, all red and black and blue and purple, and Touka couldn't even remember what half of them meant anymore, so it'd just been easier to forget about it all.

In the end, Touka couldn't help but think it had been a foolish thing to think she could just divide Kaneki in human and ghoul fractions. Partly because people are more than the sum of their parts, and it was unfair to expect someone to just fit in neatly in the ghoul- or human- labeled boxes Touka liked using, and partly because Touka should’ve known better than to expect Kaneki to be as simple and as easy to figure out as that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This sounded a lot better in my head.


	8. Rize - Instinctive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She does what feels good, not despite the rules, but _regardless_ of them. Because in the land of the damned, the powerful make the rules, and Rize is _nothing_ if not powerful.

Rize is a drop of blood free falling at incredibly low speed. She ripples in her descent, changes without rhyme or reason or pattern on her downward spiral, and is still uncannily dramatic (riveting fascinating singularly symbolic) for all that.

Rize is a breath-taking woman, all white skin and long hair and coquettish charm. She has beauty like a pile of decapitated heads stacked upon one another, and wit like razors hidden inside poisoned apples. Rize...

is fickle, and antagonistic, and hedonistic. She does what feels good, not despite the rules, but regardless of them. Because in the land of the damned, the powerful make the rules, and Rize is _nothing_ if not powerful. In many different ways.

Above all, however, Rize is a ghoul. Not necessarily a monster, no, (though she is that, too,) she is simply driven by hunger and hunger and _hunger_ , burning with the desire to consume the world whole in order to survive. Which is a terrible strategy to follow if you wish stay alive, really, but Rize is a creature of instinct and flesh rather than reasoning - she may make plans, but short-term, immediate strategies are what she resorts to, if given half a chance.

And instinct does not fail her, no matter how much she tests it. Luring the prey and hunting it and gorging herself almost-satisfied... _instinct_ is what helps her do all that.


	9. Rize - Playful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She is an abomination, of sorts, bait and predator and uncaring observer.

Rize likes playing games of cat and mouse, likes having her appetite sparked and fanned into a frenzy by the thrill of the chase. She enjoys her pray's struggles, its panic, its realisation that all is hopeless and death is not just inevitable, but  _near_. For her, a meal and a game.

She is a creature of blood pumping through veins and eyes dilating, of selfish pleasure and malignant satisfaction. She is an abomination, of sorts, bait and predator and uncaring observer. A playful contradiction. 

 _She_ , Rize thinks as she catches sight of a young-faced, dark-haired young man reading a morbid-titled book,  _is hungry_.

(Ah, it is truly such a pity that no one told her not to play with her food while growing up. Certainly, _such a pity_.)


	10. Rize - Hungry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is an emptiness like a _wasteland_ inside Rize.

There is an emptiness like a _wasteland_ inside Rize. This is what it feels like, at least, and sometimes she cannot help but wonder if all ghouls are born with it. If, perhaps, humans have it _too_. But Rize is hungry and Rize is selfish and the matter is irrelevant, because she does not think much of others.

In the end, she is herself, and herself _only_ , so why should she worry about others? The hunger inside her is enough to _consume the world whole_.


End file.
